The invention relates generally to a system for dispensing sheet material, and particularly to a system for dispensing security documents, from one of two sheet compartments to a collecting station.
Such a system typically has a separate delivery roller assigned to each sheet compartment acting on the respective foremost sheet of a sheet stack in its respective compartment. Each delivery roller feeds the respective sheet drawn off from the stack to a respective conveyor roller assigned to each compartment. Each conveyor roller feeds the aforementioned sheet to a dispensing conveyor which is common to both sheet compartments. The delivery and conveyor rollers are driven by a stepping motor.
This system is used for the purpose of, for example, dispensing security documents, such as currency notes, of two different nominal values individually to the collecting station. To this end, security documents of one nominal value are in each case stacked in one sheet compartment, and always only one single currency note is drawn off from the respective stack and fed to the dispensing conveyor by the delivery and conveyor roller assigned to this sheet compartment. The dispensing system for different types of security documents therefore has a double module in which two individual modules for dispensing one type of security document in each case are connected via a common dispensing conveyor. A single module contains one sheet compartment and the delivery and conveyor roller assigned to the latter.
A system of this type is known from European Patent EP 0 161 742. In the case of the known system, there is a single stepping motor for driving the delivery rollers and the conveyor rollers of the two individual modules. By reversing the direction of rotation of the stepping motor, security documents are dispensed either from one or from the other individual module. The security documents are fed to a common dispensing conveyor via a shuttle conveyor assigned to each individual module. The shuttle conveyor systems are not suitable for a compact construction, because the systems utilize a significant proportion of the total structural space of an individual module and because additional components are necessary for their implementation.
A further disadvantage of the known system is that the individual modules and the shuttle conveyors are not identical and are thus not simply constructed. Hence, the individual modules or their component parts are also not interchangeable. The production outlay is thus higher than in the case of identical individual modules.